Low-fat Fries, Offensive Burger Ads and Tainted Bacon

April 14, 2009

In a recent study of heart-healthy foods, vegetables, nuts and the Mediterranean diet were named as “good” heart foods, while–shocker!–the trans fats in french fries are bad. Meat, eggs and milk are still in heart-health limbo.
[AP via Google]

Meanwhile, an Iowa company is working on a genetically engineered soybean oil that will be able to make a low-fat french fry. The new high-oleic oil will have no trans fats and should last up to five times longer in commercial fryers than other zero-trans-fat oils.
[USA Today]

Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin will host “Extreme Cuisine,” a new Food Network show that will show him traveling the world eating octopus, ants’ eggs and Peruvian ceviche. Says Corwin: “It’s not about grossout foods.”
[NY Daily News]

Burger King joins Taco Bell on the list of US fast-food chains to offend Mexico. In an ad for the Texican Whopper, a short wrestler in a Mexican flag cape teams up with a tall, lanky cowboy to illustrate: “The taste of Texas with a little spicy Mexican.”
[AP via Yahoo!]

Bad news for pork lovers: free range pigs are more likely than industrially farmed ones to carry salmonella, the pathogen toxoplasma and the parasite trichina, the latter of which was thought to no longer exist.
[NY Times]

Mars candy plans to have all its chocolate come from sustainable sources by 2020. The announcement comes a month after competitor Cadbury said its Dairy Milk chocolate bar would carry a Fairtrade Foundation seal by the end of the summer.
[Washington Post]